Rufus are extremely important to how funk music has translated into more recent years. As Questlove pointed out so well in his book Mo Meta Blues while breaking down the 1977 album Ask Rufus, the bands fairly stripped down rhythm section based sound was a stylistic precursor to the neo soul sound of the early/late aughts. When guitarist Tony Maiden joined Rufus in 1974,he came a key focus of the band-often duetting with his voice and guitar with the bands iconic lead vocalist Chaka Khan. When Chaka left the band in the late 70’s to pursue a solo career,Rufus started recording albums without her.

The second of these post-Chaka Khan Rufus albums was 1981’s Party ‘Til You’re Broke. On this album the main instrumental,songwriting and vocal focuses shifted directly to Tony and the bands late 70’s keyboardist David “Hawk” Wolinksi. It was yet another album that music literature of my adolescence instructed readers to avoid. Ended up finding a vinyl copy at a small record shop in NYC while visiting my aunt. More recently I picked up a Japanese import CD of it. Still it really stopped me in my tracks to throw this vinyl on my aunt’s old turntable and be blown away RIGHT away with “Tonight We Love”.

John Robinson kicks right on the snare heavy funk drums. Hawk accents every other beat with his deep descending Moog bass. That synth bass worms it’s way trombone style into the main song. This consists of that squiggling synth bass accompanied by a higher pitched synth melody,Tony Maiden’s brittle drum-like chicken scratch guitar and the thick slap bass of Louis Johnson. Johnson’s bass and Tony’s rock guitar throw down hold down the refrains-while an easy going rhythm guitar holds down the fort along with more synth accents from Hawk and Jerry Hey’s horn arrangements.

On the choruses of the song,the main melodic statement turns to beginning theme of the song afer the main synth bass/drum intro-with Hey’s horn charts playing direct call and response to the vocal hook. There’s a second refrain after the second play of the chorus-this one in a more major key and featuring Hey’s woodwinds for the melodic statement. After a huge horn fanfare and drum roll,the song strips down to the drums again with Louis Johnson throwing down an ultra funky slap bass solo. After this-the song essentially reboots itself for another round of refrains/choruses before the groove fades out.

“Tonight We Love” is simply an amazing song. I’d personally put it up there as the finest funk Rufus made after Chaka Khan went solo. The late Louis Johnson almost acts as an official member of Rufus hear-his slap bass as much the star of the show as Tony’s many different guitar licks and Hawk’s many keyboard parts. This is a very Westlake studio oriented boogie/post disco type production-very well played on and produced. All the same,the funk kicks extremely hard in that classic “rufusized” sort of way. With the driving synths,guitar,drums and bass this is some serious early 80’s hard funk.